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After Struggles, Obama Seeks Lift in Japan

President Obama joined the Group of 20 leaders on stage for a photo on Friday.Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times

YOKOHAMA, Japan — President Obama, looking to wrap up his sometimes rocky economic tour of Asia on a high note, said Saturday that he made “no apologies for doing whatever I can” to bring jobs to the United States. And he vowed to pursue trade partnerships and American investment in the region so that he could put the United States back on a path of “discovering, creating and building the products that are sold all over the world.”

Mr. Obama arrived in this bustling port city on Friday evening for the second of two back-to-back summit meetings, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. In a speech on Saturday morning to a group of business leaders here, he seemed to be aiming his message as much at a domestic audience in the United States as to an Asian one.

“As president of the United States, I make no apologies for doing whatever I can to bring those jobs and industries to America,” said Mr. Obama, who will return to Washington on Sunday. “But what I’ve also said throughout this trip is that in the 21st century, there’s no need to view trade, commerce or economic growth as zero-sum games, where one country always has to prosper at the expense of another. If we work together, and act together, strengthening our economic ties can be a win-win for all of our nations.”

Yokohama is the president’s final stop on a 10-day, four-nation journey that took him to India, Indonesia and South Korea. In the wake of the battering his party took in the midterm elections at home last week, Mr. Obama has cast his Asia trip as mission to revive the American economy and bolster job growth.

During a news conference on Friday afternoon in Seoul, Mr. Obama attributed the conflict to his administration’s efforts to even out global trade imbalances, by pressing other nations to accept numerical targets for limiting trade surpluses or deficits. In the end, the leaders of the world’s 20 most affluent economies drafted a communiqué that fell short of Mr. Obama’s goal, leaving most of the work on creating ways to monitor and correct such imbalances for future meetings.

“Part of the reason that sometimes it seems as if the United States is attracting some dissent is because we’re initiating ideas,” the president said at the news conference in Seoul. “We’re putting them forward. The easiest thing for us to do would be to take a passive role and let things just drift, which wouldn’t cause any conflict. But we thought it was important for us to put forward more structure to this idea of balanced and sustained growth. And some countries pushed back.”

Mr. Obama arrived on the world stage two years ago to a fawning reception by world leaders. They arrived at global conferences carrying copies of his memoir, hoping for autographs. They angled for handshakes and “bilats” — diplomatic jargon for one-on-one meetings. They maneuvered to get near him in photo opportunities. But in Seoul, he grappled with questions about the role of the United States as a world power, about his stature on the world stage in a post midterm environment and even about his own diplomatic touch.

“It’s not just a function of personal charm,” the president said. “It’s a function of countries’ interests and seeing if we can work through to align them.”

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When a reporter asked what kind of complaints he was hearing from fellow leaders, Mr. Obama laughed it off, asking, “What about compliments?” As to whether the elections at home have weakened him overseas, he served up a one-word answer: No.

And while he told reporters before leaving Washington that his relationship with the American people had gotten “rockier and tougher” over time, he said in Seoul that his relations with foreign leaders had actually grown stronger since he took office.

“When I first came into office, people might have been interested in more photo ops because there had been a lot of hoopla surrounding my election,” Mr. Obama said, adding that he now had a “genuine friendship” with a raft of world leaders. Still, he said, “That doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be differences.”

“It wasn’t any easier to talk about currency when I had just been elected and my poll numbers were at 65 percent than it is now,” Mr. Obama said. “It was hard then and it is now.”

Despite his stumbles in Seoul, Mr. Obama’s first two stops — India and Indonesia — were quite successful for him. In India, he lifted export controls that had banned American companies from selling sensitive technologies and backed India’s bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council — moves that foreign policy analysts in both parties credited with turning around a relationship that had been faltering. In Indonesia, where he lived for four years as a boy, he had a sentimental homecoming — even though it was cut short when a cloud of volcanic ash interfered with air travel, forcing him to leave several hours early.

In Yokohama, Mr. Obama tried to sum up those highlights, as he sought to link America’s own history of innovation and discovery — “the idea that led us westward and skyward” — with Asia’s own economic transformation, and the economic development he had witnessed here.

“In different ways and different places over the last week, I have seen this idea alive in the teeming, thriving democracies of Asia,” he said. “ It gives me great confidence in the ties that bind our people, and great hope in our ability to move toward the future together — not as drops, but with the strength of an ocean.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 13, 2010, on Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Obama Seeks Lift in Japan After Bumpy Ride in Seoul. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe